This week has flown by, so many plans, so little achieved. Still, we have had no rain. The hot and humid weather continues. Come late afternoon the clouds build up to what look like threatening thunderstorms, but then quickly dissipate leaving one feeling hot, sticky and frustrated.
The city is shrouded in smoke that has drifted in from a bushfire in the Grampians in Victoria which is some hundreds of kilometres away. The fire brigade and police have been inundated with calls from people thinking that there may be a fire locally. Some days it smells just as if the fire is down the road, so to speak. They assure us that it is not. A good downpour is what we need to clear the city of all the smoke and smog.
Tonight we had to meet Katie at the airport. Kahra and Darrin were flying to Melbourne. They were going over for Zoe and Michael's engagement party and no kids had been invited. Katie was not happy that she was not flying as well.
After picking her up we went off to do some grocery shopping, have some dinner and then we took a drive down to the beach to get an icecream.
On the way to the beach Katie asks, "Nanna, what is a prostitute?" I explain to her what a prostitute is and then asked her why did she want to know. "Oh, because back on that fence they had a sign, Trespassers will be Prose........" Tony tells her that the word is prosecuted. He then explained what the sign meant and what it meant to be prosecuted. Gives a different meaning...."Trespassers will be Prostituted". We had a laugh about it!
She had just finished telling us about her class at school having discussed sexual abuse and also about having a boyfriend/girlfriend. She said that one of the boys had asked one of the girls to be his girlfriend and the girl had said no. The boy got quite upset and so he went off to tell the teacher. That is when her teacher decided to give them a talk on boyfriend/girlfriend relationships.
I made a comment that she is too young to have a boyfriend. I said that her friends should include boys and girls but not single out one particular boy. "Oh, but I do have a boyfriend" she said. "You what!" I exclaimed, trying to sound shocked. "Yeah, this boy who is a cousin of my friend, Kiriana, asked me to go out with him and I said yes". "What do you mean go out, Mum wouldn't let you go out with a boy on your own?" I said.
"No Nanna, not that sort of going out, it just means that we all hang around together at school, playing chasey, on the play equipment, kicking the footy and soccer ball, things like that". Oh my how the times have changed. Back in my day boys were the farthest things on our mind at 11 years old, we were still into playing with dolls.
As for sexual abuse, we didn't even know what sex was. Sex was a taboo subject back in my day. I was well into my high school years before we were taught about it in Physiology and even then I didn't go home and discuss it with my mother. Whenever it was mentioned at school it was all giggles and laughter and jokes that you couldn't go home and repeat to your Mum and Dad.
I remember my sister, when she was about 10 or 11 years old being totally disgusted thinking that this woman had a ball stuck up her dress. The woman was pregnant. We were never told where babies came from. Somehow they magically appeared.
These days our children are more aware about what sex is. It is a good thing that we can openly discuss it with them. It is still the butt of "dirty jokes" but it doesn't hold the stigma of being "dirty". Unfortunately the children of today have to be more aware about the sexual predators who live in our communities. I'm not saying that there weren't any in my day, obviously there were as we hear about the abuse children suffered at the hands of the various Churches and of others who have come forward to tell their stories of being abused by some family member or acquaintance.
Thankfully it's not being "swept under the carpet" anymore. At least one would hope not.
The clouds build, get darker but no rain
and then we have a fiery sunset
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